From Magic Lantern to Movies: The Optical Magic Lantern Journal 1889 – 1903 – A review

Digitisation of old newspapers and journals is making a wealth of hitherto difficult-to-access material available to researchers. At one time you might have to travel long distances to a specialist library which carried increasingly fragile (having generally been considered ephemeral when first produced) periodicals you wished to examine. The situation was improved by microfiche, though even if a title was available this still entailed a trip to use expensive, cumbersome and often fiddly equipment, and searching was difficult (and off-puttingly noisy). Since then digitisation is increasing apace, though many very worthy projects are only available online via academic institutions, and therefore not generally accessible.

Sometimes material appears on CD and DVD, making it easy to search large quantities of text at home. Instead of having to devote several feet of shelving to yellowing publications, or travel to see them, one can obtain the lot in a convenient form. One such venture is this DVD, published by PhotoResearch. Its genesis lies in the purchase by a pair of collectors of 139 issues of the Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger on eBay, and these have been supplemented with copies from Oxford’s Bodleian Library to complete the set.

The OMLJ was published from 1889 to 1903 as a trade paper for lanternists, though it did stray into general photographic matters (the editor for all but its last year was J Hay Taylor, son of J Traill Taylor, editor of the British Journal of Photography). One hundred and sixty issues were produced, totalling nearly 5,000 pages. The complete run is presented here as PDFs in two versions – a high definition copy of each issue, and a lower resolution one that is searchable. The issues are arranged by volume, all thirteen of them, so if a particular issue is required, it is simple to access.

To make navigation easier, the issues are indexed with a couple of thousand content items, with links to the issues. These are arranged in several ways: by title, listed alphabetically; by contributor; by type of item – editorials, articles, letters, obituaries and so forth; by people mentioned, including contributors, with biographical information where available; and by advertiser. Fortunately all the advertising, often discarded when journals are bound, is included, providing important information on the trade.

Despite the journal’s title there much here to interest early film enthusiasts. It allows the reader to track the magic lantern as it gives way as an entertainment medium to films (or rather, “animated photographs”), which move from a novelty in the mid-1890s to an increasingly significant medium in the early twentieth century (hence the disc’s title). Thus the April 1896 issue could imply that they were a passing fad with “The present boom, as regards the lantern, appears to be in the direction of ‘animated projection.’ Some time ago we had Friese Greene's apparatus, but latterly quite a host have arisen.” A mere seven years later, J Page Croft was surely swimming against the tide when he wrote an article which appeared in the last issue, entitled ‘How to Become a Lantern Lecturer’. A lesson that the Journal teaches is that cinema did not spring ex nihilo, but came from a well-established culture of projection.

It could be argued that using a disc instead of leafing through the pages removes something from the experience of research, and it is true that a connection is formed when handling paper that is missing from a computer screen. But the advantages of being able to scan large quantities of information quickly, along with the conservation aspects, and the sheer convenience of being able to do it at one’s desk, means that ventures such as this are to be applauded. One day such individual initiatives will be integrated into a Grand Unified Database, with sophisticated search facilities that can range widely over vast tracts of newsprint. In the meantime this will do nicely.


From Magic Lanterns to Movies, published by PhotoResearch, October 2010, ISBN 978-0-9523011-1-0, £60 including UK and international airmail postage. Contact: Mike Smith, South Park, Galphay Road, Kirkby Malzeard, Ripon, North Yorkshire, HG4 3RX, UK or email: lmh.smith@magiclanternsocy.demon.co.uk.

Hiding the Elephant - A review

Hiding the Elephant, by Jim Steinmeyer

Jim Steinmeyer has provided a very entertaining look at the history of stage magic from the early nineteenth century to the 1930s. This was one of the art’s golden ages – we are arguably living through another, though after reading Hiding the Elephant one might be forgiven for thinking it is in large part derivative of past achievements – and he gives us a lovingly crafted (and crafty) look at the personalities and some of their tricks.

His structuring device is Harry Houdini making an elephant vanish on the stage of New York's Hippodrome Theatre in 1918. It’s one of the most famous acts in the history of magic, but was received with general indifference by those who saw him perform it; the only people who could appreciate it were those sitting directly in front, which was a tiny proportion of the audience. Nevertheless it has intrigued magicians ever since. The author has investigated and puts forward his theory of how Houdini did it at the end of the book, along with a description of his own effort at doing the same with a rather more compact donkey.

While we are waiting for that, we are treated to a history of magicians and their cunning. Steinmeyer is as much interested in the personalities of the magicians who turned magic into an art form as he is in the technology, and gives a flavour of the intrigues behind the development of some of the greatest tricks, the schemes and professional jealousies, friendships and rivalries, the thefts of ideas and sometimes equipment, and despite all that a sense of camaraderie among fellow professionals.

The book’s scope is ambitious, and an extensive cast of larger-than-life characters parades through it. The dramatis personae are listed at the front, with pen portraits, and this is the first indication that this is going to be a complicated story, with names such as Goldin, Goldston and Thurston, Hermann and Kellar, to keep straight.

He covers well-known figures such as the Maskelyne dynasty and David Devant at Egyptian Hall, Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, mainly remembered because Houdini borrowed his name, and Georges Méliès, known today as a film pioneer, and who makes a very brief walk-on appearance (it has to be said that the book’s focus is mostly Anglo-American). Others are undeservedly obscure, such as Charles Morritt and P T Selbit, and Steinmeyer provides a valuable service in bringing the achievements of a range of lesser-known performers to a wider audience.

To add to the complexity, Steinmeyer generally analyses the technical aspects of the tricks with just enough information to convey a sense of the mechanics, but descriptions can get quite complicated, even with the aid of line drawings. The chapters are choppy, with individuals, perhaps appropriately but not always elegantly, appearing and disappearing from the narrative, which never spends too much time on any one before going on to the next, and then back again often over several chapters. While written in a clear style for the general reader, it does help to have some background knowledge of the subject already. Yet despite the stylistic infelicities Steinmeyer has a good sense of momentum, keeping the reader wanting to know the secret of whatever he happens to be discussing.

Not least we get a sense of the stresses involved in having constantly to find the next big thing, while at the same time Steinmeyer shows how themes could be endlessly recycled, a vivid demonstration that still-drinkable old wine could be put in shiny new bottles. The emphasis is not so much on the mechanics but the presentation and showmanship of the performer, that is, it’s not about the idea of the trick as much as what you do with it. And some tricks were amazing, whether small or large scale: sawing a woman in half or levitating her for example.

A motif running through the book is the versatility of glass. In the nineteenth century, competing magicians combined advances in optics with mirrors that permitted people to disappear, or "ghosts" to appear, combining the art and science of reflected images to create attractions such as Pepper's Ghost, Proteus, the Oracle of Delphi and the Sphinx. As the cliché indicates, they really did do it with mirrors, though sometimes wires came in handy. One marvels at the ingenuity and leaps of imagination which some of these devices required for their conceptualisation and development.

The methods were often cruder though. The Davenport Brothers took advantage of the popularity of Spiritualism, touring with a ‘séance’ cabinet, and their strength was the ambiguity of their act. Steinmeyer looks at their career in terms of magic rather than the physical phenomena of Spiritualism, and finds that actually they weren’t that good because they did too much: by showing themselves untied they undermined their own illusion. It is ironic that Houdini, scourge of mediums, should seek out the aged Ira Davenport, and in his 1924 book A Magician Among the Spirits exclude the Davenports from his general blasts against the purveyors of the paranormal, even though Ira and brother William had capitalised on it.

It is sad that so many of the artists so lovingly describes have been eclipsed by the myth created by Houdini‘s tireless self-promotion. In their own time Howard Thurston was as famous, but is largely forgotten today outside specialist circles. Houdini was a remarkable personality, but in terms of magical ingenuity and presentation he was not in the first rank – he was a great escape artist but a poor stage magician, and this is not a flattering portrait of him. Steinmeyer, though, clearly has a huge affection for most of those he covers, for all their personal frailties.

As one of the world's leading designers of stage illusions, Steinmeyer writes from a fund of practical experience, which gives his account not only the evocative warmth of a fellow professional, but also a practical appreciation that would be lost if the book had been written by an armchair theoretician. He too has confronted logistical problems and overcome them, and so has an insider’s understanding.

He also provides a little of the philosophy of magic, describing what distinguishes a good trick from a bad one. The result is an engaging and accessible (as far as possible given that some of the tricks are pretty mind-bending) guide showing “How magicians invented the impossible” – or at least gave the impression they had, which is truly magic.


Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible, by Jim Steinmeyer, London: William Heinnemann, 2003.

Eleanor Sidgwick and her Doctorates

Some time ago I reviewed a book called The Articulate Dead by Michael E Tymn. He had referred to Eleanor Sidgwick, a significant early figure in the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), as “Dr Sidgwick”, and I wrote that she did not have a doctorate and was always referred to as “Mrs Sidgwick”. More recently I reviewed a DVD, This Life, Next Life: Evidence for the Afterlife, by Keith Parsons, who also referred to “Dr Sidgwick”. I wondered if Keith had picked up the reference from The Articulate Dead.

Shortly afterwards I had an email from Michael Tymn saying that he had read somewhere that Eleanor Sidgwick had a doctorate, possibly an honorary one, but that would still count. He had been in touch with Keith Parsons, who said that he too had come across this information somewhere, though not in The Articulate Dead (Keith later remembered that it was in an online piece – by Mike Tymn). I was left with the question of whether Eleanor Sidgwick had achieved a doctorate, if so where from, and whether it was legitimate to refer to her as “Dr Sidgwick”, a title which she seems never to have used herself.

While she did not possess an earned doctorate, she was awarded several honorary ones later in her career, not primarily for her psychical or mathematical research but rather for her administration and efforts in promoting women’s education. The basic information is contained in the book written after her death, which occurred on 10 February 1936, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick: a Memoir by her niece Ethel Sidgwick (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1938, pp. 165-6):

“Mrs. Sidgwick's services to Universities and to education generally, were recognised by four Honorary Degrees: the first being offered by the "Victoria" University, uniting Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. Birmingham was the second, St. Andrews the third. Her fourth degree, late but not least valued, was conferred by Edinburgh.”

Helen Fowler’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography refers to the honorary degrees in similar terms and is presumably drawn from the Memoir. They do not specify whether the degrees were doctorates, but it was a reasonable assumption that they were. To find out more about what kinds of degrees she was awarded, and when, I contacted all four institutions mentioned, plus Newnham College, Cambridge, with which she had had a long relationship.

Ann Thomson, archivist at Newnham, replied that the college records showed that Eleanor Sidgwick received the four honorary degrees for her services to education, and added that she had never seen Eleanor referred to as Dr Sidgwick, which would more likely have been used in connection with her husband Dr (later Professor) Henry Sidgwick. She added that in 1921 women were granted the 'title of degree' but it was not until 1948 that they were granted full membership of Cambridge University. She told me that there is no mention in the Newnham records of Eleanor Sidgwick ever taking a doctorate in her own right.

I did a search of the 'Times' online archive and indeed found that only Henry was ever referred to as ‘Dr’, never Eleanor. So what exactly were these degrees which were awarded to Mrs Sidgwick? The four institutions replied, some with more detail than others, but all supplied the basic information. To take the awards in chronological order:

The Victoria University

The Victoria University was a federal institution established in 1880, incorporating what eventually became the universities of Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. Jenny Wallwork at Manchester told me that their records showed that the Victoria University awarded Mrs Henry Sidgwick the honorary degree of Litt.D. in 1899. Ms Wallwork kindly checked the online records of the ‘Manchester Guardian’ newspaper, and said that the decision was approved by the University Court at a meeting on Thursday 22nd June, 1899. The degree ceremony was fully reported in the newspaper issue dated July 3, 1899. The full citation read out at the ceremony was included, and it stated that the degree was awarded to recognise "the varied accomplishments and the self-sacrificing devotion of the successful administrator".

Birmingham

Philippa Bassett confirmed that the University of Birmingham awarded Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick an honorary LLD in 1909. According to the minutes of University Council, a Special Degree Congregation was planned to follow the royal opening of the University’s Edgbaston buildings in July 1909, and the relevant minute book contains a printed list of persons whom the Senate wished to invite to accept the Honorary Degree of LLD: “The matter has been carefully discussed in the several Faculties, as well as at meetings of the Principals’ and Deans’ Committee and each outside name is recommended by the Faculty which contains experts in the specific subject.” Eleanor Sidgwick is listed as Mrs Sidgwick and is described as Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. The reason for the award is not given in the Council’s minutes, and Ms Bassett concludes that the minutes of these various bodies might throw light on a more specific reason for Eleanor Sidgwick’s selection, but she did not have the resources to undertake a search of them.

It is worth adding that the Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1919 was Sir Oliver Lodge (knighted in 1902). Lodge was a colleague of Mrs Sidgwick’s in the SPR, and it is likely that that he exercised some influence in the award of the honorary doctorate.

St Andrews

St Andrews dealt with my enquiry as a Freedom of Information request. June Weir wrote that

“ELEANOR MILDRED SIDGWICK received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) in person at a ceremony in St Andrews as part of the Quincentenary celebrations of the University on Thursday 14 September 1911 at 1030 am. She was one of two women so honoured, amongst 86 recipients of the LLD on that occasion, the other being Louisa Innes Lumsden. Both women were pioneers in the field of the education of women. There does not seem to have been a normal laureation address, since there were so many graduates at the ceremony. Rather, a souvenir handbook was published in 1912 which contains a potted biography of the honorary graduates. Mrs Sidgwick is described as follows:

“‘74 Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, sister of the Right Honourable A.J. Balfour and widow of Professor Henry Sidgwick, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1892-1910. Mrs Sidgwick has been closely connected with the progress of secondary Education in many ways. Most notable perhaps is her work for Newnham College for women, which owes an untold amount to her extraordinarily calm clear good sense and judgment, her great administrative ability, her generous outlook and living sympathy. For 35 years she has been, and still is, Treasurer to the College, and has had the finance practically in her hands, and it is impossible to overpraise the wise, sound, far-seeing policy, pursued by her throughout with marked success. In 1892 she became Principal, an office which she has only recently resigned, and she is now President of the Newnham Council. She was a most useful and active member of the Royal Commission on Education, the first Royal Commission on which women were appointed to sit, and has been on many Educational bodies since. Mrs Sidgwick has taken an active part in the work of the Psychical Society [i.e. the Society for Psychical Research] from its commencement and has made valuable contributions to its proceedings.’

“Her name was suggested to the University Senatus by the Honorary Degrees committee but there does not seem to be a record of who might have nominated her.”

Edinburgh

The final honorary doctorate awarded to Mrs Sidgwick was also that of LLD, significantly for her academic work as much as for her contributions to sound administration. Arnott Wilson supplied the text of a letter written by Mrs Sidgwick, as well as the relevant part of the encomium read at the ceremony.

The letter from Mrs Sidgwick, dated from Fisher's Hill, 25 March 1923, states: "I am in receipt of your letter enclosing the offer of the Senatus Academicus of the University of Edinburgh to confer on me the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws. I cannot refuse so great an honour and am much gratified that the University should consider me worthy of it. My only hesitation about replying at once has been due to the fact that at my age [she was 78] one cannot rely on the health and strength necessary for long journeys and fatiguing ceremonials some months ahead, so that element of uncertainty must accompany my acceptance".

It appears that she did manage to attend the graduation ceremony which was held on the morning of 12th July 1923, when the degree was conferred. In presenting the thirteen candidates for the honorary LLD degrees (which included Winston Churchill), the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor James Mackintosh, stated: "Women figure so prominently in our Ordinary list of graduands that it would almost seem invidious if they were not represented in the Honorary list as well. Fortunately, Mrs Sidgwick has seen her way to accept our invitation, and it would be hard to find a lady better entitled to University honour or more deserving of the gratitude of her sex. During her long connection with Newnham College as Principal and Bursar, she proved herself a sane and judicious leader in the movement for the Higher Education of Women. She has contributed materially to the progress of Electrical Science by the part she took in investigating the absolute values of the fundamental electrical units. In the more occult region of psychical research, she has pursued her inquiries in the same strictly scientific spirit, not without a certain measure of philosophic doubt. It adds to the warmth of our welcome that Mrs Sidgwick is a member of the brilliant family which has given us our revered Chancellor."

The “revered Chancellor” of the University was Mrs Sidgwick’s brother, Arthur Balfour, who had been appointed in 1891 and was created The Earl of Balfour in 1922.

One further source of information is Burke’s Peerage. The 96th edition of 1938, p.207, in the section devoted to the Balfour family, refers to Mrs Sidgwick as in possession of the four doctorates, which it then lists, along with the relevant institution. It does not say that these are honorary doctorates, the implication being that Burke’s is above such mundane distinctions, and one might (at a stretch) assume that Mrs Sidgwick had achieved them in a non-honorary way. The wording was essentially unchanged in the 107th edition of 2003, and it is conceivable that this has been a source of confusion.


So Eleanor Sidgwick was awarded four honorary doctorates, her tally being one Litt.D and three LLDs, but the question still remains whether this would entitle her to use the title. Who better to ask than the University of Cambridge, and I received a reply from Tim Milner, who is the University’s Ceremonial Officer. He said that there were no hard and fast rules. Within the University, a person with an Honorary Cambridge Doctorate, but not a substantive one (i.e. one for which a thesis has been submitted), might be addressed as Dr in formal and social correspondence. However, in the outside world it would be up to the recipient: “Some clearly like the style Dr, others do not. Some people think it should be used socially and formally, and others not”, he concluded. Wikipedia also distinguishes honorary from substantive degrees and says that although honorary ones are not generally considered to be of the same standing as the substantive ones, in principle the honorary ones "may be considered to have technically the same standing, and to grant the same privileges and style of address as their substantive counterparts, except where explicitly stated to the contrary".

With no fixed rules and fluid conventions regarding honorary doctorates, I have to say that Tymn and Parsons were not incorrect in referring to Eleanor as “Dr Sidgwick”, so I withdraw my criticism of the usage. However, the point remains that, as far as I have been able to establish, this was not a style used either by her, or by her contemporaries either to or about her. I suspect that while she was happy to receive the recognition for her efforts, thereby publicising the cause of women’s education, she did not consider it right to use a title more appropriate to academic achievement. She might even have considered the use, based on only an honorary award, pretentious. The irony is of course that she would have been more than able to achieve the distinction on the basis of her intellectual capacities had the times been more favourable.

As a side issue, Ann Thomson at Newnham refers to Henry as “Dr Sidgwick”, but he was in the same position as his wife, his degrees being honorary. According to his biographer, Bart Schultz, he had a number of these, from the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Leipzig, Oxford and Budapest. He became Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1883.

Eleanor Sidgwick's scrolls seem to have disappeared. In addition to Newnham, I asked Jonathan Smith at Trinity College if they were there, as its library holds some of Mrs Sidgwick’s papers, and Peter Meadows at Cambridge University Library, which houses the SPR’s archives, but drew a blank.


Acknowledgements:

In addition to the archivists mentioned, thanks are due to Alan Gauld for checking Ethel Sidgwick’s book on her aunt and to Trevor Hamilton for the relevant section of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (and for the information that before her untimely death Janet Oppenheim planned to write a full biography of Mrs/Dr Sidgwick, a project which is clearly overdue).

The Case of the Phantom Polaroid

This article appeared in Fortean Times No 261, a special issue dated April 2010, pp.64-65. The issue had a number of articles related to photography, and included my review of Melvyn Willin’s Ghosts Caught on Film 2.

After the publication of the article I obtained a copy of Robin Foy’s monumental Witnessing the Impossible, described as “the definitive story of the Scole Experimental Group”, which contains an account of every séance it held. The session which produced the Conan Doyle image about which I had written is described on p.111 (it is unfortunate that such a large book – xvi+560pp – does not have an index, though there is an appendix listing new phenomena, with dates). It took place on Friday 13 January 1995 with the entire Scole group present.

The entry surprisingly says that two images of Conan Doyle were obtained, “one of which was clear and upright, with the other being more blurred and sideways on.” Which one is reproduced in Grant and Jane Solomon’s The Scole Experiment is unclear (they refer to the Conan Doyle picture on p.60 but do not say that there was another one). If Foy is referring to the positioning of the face, the one published would be the first, which is full face rather than in profile, and anyway it seems reasonable that they would have chosen the better of the two for publication, though it is an exaggeration to call it “clear”.

Foy reproduces exactly the same version as in the Solomons’ book as Plate 3, but does not specify which of the two it was either. Curiously the appendix merely says “Photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”, suggesting that there was only one image. As far as I am aware the other picture, if it still exists, has not been published.

The article below is as it appeared in FT, except that the published version included references within the text to previous FT articles on the Scole Experimental Group and Ted Serios, turned my own embedded references into footnotes (with TinyURL links), and put the reference to the SPR’s Scole Report as a separate “See also...”. The FT article included Gates’s painting and an enlargement of the picture in the Solomons’ book, cropping the latter slightly. The picture above is my own attempt to recreate the Scole image, manipulating the painting digitally.

The Case of the Phantom Polaroid
Tom Ruffles offers a possible identity for a supposedly unknown image of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle obtained during a Norfolk séance.

Roger Straughan’s recent book A Study in Survival: Conan Doyle Solves the Final Problem mentions a Polaroid photo of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which was obtained during a séance held by the Scole Experimental Group in 1995 (Straughan, 2009, p.136). This was a circle that met for séances at Scole, Norfolk, led by Robin and Sandra Foy. Robin Foy had also formed an organisation called the Noah’s Ark Society for Physical Mediumship (NAS) in 1990.

The photograph of Conan Doyle was reproduced in The Scole Experiment by Grant and Jane Solomon (1999, opposite p53). Straughan was intrigued by it as he did not recognise the source. He asked the late Montague Keen, an investigator from the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) and co-author of an extensive report on Scole published by the SPR, if the picture had been identified by the Group. Keen said that it hadn’t. Nor was a friend of Straughan’s, who was knowledgeable about Conan Doyle and to whom he showed it, able to match it to an existing photograph.

This was significant, because if the Scole Polaroid did not correspond to a photograph of Conan Doyle taken during his lifetime, the implication was that it was a post-mortem portrait impressed on the Polaroid, and therefore evidence of Conan Doyle’s survival of death. As Straughan says: “So if fakery of any kind had been involved (as sceptics will always maintain in such cases), where did the original come from which the fake picture would have had to use?”

While reviewing Straughan’s book (Ruffles 2010), I felt that I had managed to trace the source of the Scole image, not to an existing photograph but to a painting. I thought that the original was a portrait painted in 1927 by Henry L Gates and owned by the National Portrait Gallery (NPG4115). It was not a straight copy, however, but had been manipulated by being reversed and closely cropped, converted to black and white and degraded.

I put this theory to Straughan and we had a friendly discussion during which he said that he and his colleague had considered the painting but had dismissed it as not bearing enough similarity to the Scole picture. He naturally asked me how I felt the alterations had been achieved, and I offered a suggestion, while acknowledging that manipulation, if that is what had occurred, could have been done by other means. My way would require access to a darkroom to reverse the picture.

The method I suggested to Straughan would be to take a reproduction (perhaps a postcard from the Gallery); photograph it on ordinary colour film stock which could be processed commercially; put the negative in an enlarger, but reversed; print a copy on black and white paper, which gives a low-contrast look when using a colour negative and, as the original portrait has a very dark background, there would be no tell-tale extraneous features at the edges; take a Polaroid of the print, coming in close with just the head in the frame.

The result of re-photographing the original would be a loss of detail such as the image in the Solmons' book shows. With the facilities to make prints it would be easy to do, using trial and error with the exposure and filters on the enlarger to get a satisfactory result – clear enough to show who the subject was but blurry enough to disguise the starting point. I did consider the possibility of using an acetate sheet in a photocopier, which would be simpler, but discarded the idea as it seemed likely that, if anything, the contrast would be increased rather than reduced.

I think it is fair to say that Straughan was not convinced by my hypothesis, so we agreed to disagree. And it could be argued that a discarnate Conan Doyle had utilised an existing portrait to prove his survival, impressing it on the Polaroid by paranormal means, or that one of the Scole sitters had done so, distorting a memory of the painting in the process (as Ted Serios was said to impress pictures of real yet strangely altered places on Polaroids). But the argument – that if the Polaroid does not correspond to an image of him when alive, then the case for the continuation of his personality after death is bolstered – looks weaker if an original is identified

If non-paranormal means were employed, and if the painting was the starting point, it would not have been necessary to go far for a copy. The front cover of Psychic News for 7 November 1992 carried an exposé of medium ‘Lincoln’ (Colin Fry), with the headline “Medium Caught Holding Trumpet” which began: “Shocked sitters witnessed physical medium Lincoln ‘standing in the middle of the room holding a spirit trumpet in his hand’ when the lights suddenly came on during a Noah’s Ark Society (NAS) séance last month. The séance held before an invited audience, took place at NAS chairman Robin Foy’s home in Scole, Norfolk.” (The articles can be found on tonyyouens.com.)

Next to this article is another entitled “Conan Doyle letters are auctioned”, with a picture of the man himself. This is the NPG portrait, cropped, degraded and in black and white. Someone wanting to use it as a source would have had an available image that could be re-photographed, reversed, printed and turned into a Polaroid (the Psychic News version is cropped, but the Scole picture is tighter still). A further article in Psychic News the following April stated that the NAS had carried out an investigation of the trumpet incident and still supported Fry, so they must have seen the initial front-page report, and the picture of Conan Doyle, in November.

It might be argued that this is all a lot of bother for such a meagre result, but it would be straightforward for someone experienced in a darkroom. Reversal makes it slightly more complicated than straight re-photographing but disguises the origin of the result beautifully – certainly enough to deceive a number of people familiar with pictures, including Gates’ painting, of Conan Doyle. It would be useful if other researchers were to examine the two pictures, the NPG one altered in the way I suggest, and see if they find my argument convincing.


References

Keen, Montague, Ellison, Arthur and Fontana, David, The Scole Report: An Account of an Investigation into the Genuineness of a Range of Physical Phenomena associated with a Mediumistic Group in Norfolk, England. London: Society for Psychical Research, 1999.

Psychic News, 7 November 1992, 10 April 1993.

Ruffles, Tom. Review of A Study in Survival, http://www.nthposition.com/astudyinsurvival.php, January 2010.

Solomon, Grant and Jane, The Scole Experiment: Scientific Evidence for Life After Death. London: Piatkus, 1999.

Straughan, Roger, A Study in Survival: Conan Doyle Solves the Final Problem. Ropley, Hampshire: O Books, 2009.

Youens, Tony. Articles on Noah’s Ark Society and Colin Fry in Psychic News, http://www.tonyyouens.com/psychic_news.htm.

Jack the Ripper: The Casebook - A review

Jack the Ripper: The Casebook, by Richard Jones

In a crowded marketplace even the keenest student of Jack the Ripper has to ask if yet another book is worth adding to the groaning shelf devoted to those bloody weeks in the autumn of 1888. The answer in this case is an equivocal yes - not for the text, which is basic, but for the facsimile documents that put me in mind of the old Jackdaw folders, information combined with replicas of contemporary papers.

The writing is straightforward and presented in a logical sequence, starting with a brief overview of social conditions in London’s East End, the economically precarious nature of life in which created a large population of prostitutes, and a tendency to scapegoat the influx of Jews escaping pogroms in Eastern Europe. Brief descriptions of the major police personnel involved in the investigation are followed by accounts of what are generally regarded as those killings attributed to the Ripper, set in the wider context of Whitechapel murder.

Interspersed in the descriptions of the deaths are sections recounting the police investigation and the growing anxiety of the local population. Jones sketches in the backgrounds of Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly, rather than leaving them as semi-anonymous bit-players in the drama. A section asks if the Ripper possessed medical knowledge, another examines the murders as a catalyst for social reform.

Individuals suspected at the time are described, along with weaknesses in the evidence against them, as are those who have come under suspicion in more recent years, such as Patricia Cornwell‘s allegations against Walter Sickert, the’ James Maybrick’ diary, and Francis Tumblety. The Royal family and freemasons get their name checks and are promptly exonerated. Very brief overviews of why the police didn’t catch the Ripper, the ambivalent attitudes of the press and what the area looks like now round things off.

With the foregoing are eighteen contemporary documents, each keyed in to the relevant section. These range from reports on the individual murders, some of the various cards and letters sent to the police in the name of Jack, a handbill, to newspaper reports, including a page from the ‘Illustrated Police News’, the date of which is not given (6 October).

The book’s presentation is gimmicky, glossy paper with fake stains and fingerprints, sidebars made to look like newspaper clippings, with pretend staples or paperclips to give the impression that the reader is perusing the original file, and therefore closer to the experience of what it would be like to handle original paperwork. The ‘stains’ give the pages a magazine feel, and are similar in style to the presentation of ‘Ghost Voices’ magazine: lavishly illustrated, short bursts of easily-digestible prose, the whole given a distressed veneer with stains and marks for atmosphere (though the Casebook‘s pages are always legible despite the treatment).

The photographs, which take up about half of the space, are generally well chosen but occasionally there is a sense that the picture editor was struggling to find something relevant to the topic. The cover should have had a warning that some of the post-mortem illustrations are graphic.

The book is fine as far as it goes but feels like an opportunity lost. Jones knows the material and has produced a good primer which will help to orient the reader new to the subject. But many enthusiasts buying the book for the documents will find the text perfunctory; at only 64 pages, all the sections are given only a double-page spread which means that nothing can be covered in depth.

Yet the documents themselves are of limited value as they are hard to read. Transcripts would have helped enormously, as it is very few will manage to plough through all the reports. Also, the documents are housed in very flimsy pockets which are delicate and will crease and tear with anything other than light use. The package has a natty magnetised flap to close it, which presumably is designed to hold the pockets in place when the book is shelved so that the weight of the contents does not weaken them.

The overall impression of the Casebook is that it is elegant and beautifully designed, but not functional, to be admired rather than used as a research tool. Really, there is no need to have physical copies of the documents, as full-colour illustrations would have served just as well. Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell by Stewart P Evans and Keith Skinner managed to combine colour illustrations (and more clearly than Jones’s facsimiles, which have lost some definition in the reproduction) with transcriptions, making it a model of its kind.

Jones has produced a clear introduction to the case and the issues it throws up, but it does not, provide, as the introduction claims, “everything you need to understand and launch your own investigation into the mystery of Jack the Ripper”. The would-be Ripperologist needs rather more than these materials allow to be able to do that.


Jack the Ripper: The Casebook, by Richard Jones. Andre Deutsch, 2008.